


living in the sprawl

by strangetowns



Category: Nothing Much to Do
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Near Future, Stargazing, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-28
Updated: 2015-04-28
Packaged: 2018-03-26 04:08:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3836491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangetowns/pseuds/strangetowns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The skies stretch past the grassy hills, a wild sprawl of inky light. Out here, there are no streetlights to obscure the vast expanse of stars, and when Pedro tilts his head back he feels like an aimless satellite, spinning into space. </p><p>He could get lost here, standing still among nameless galaxies. He could lose himself to the night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	living in the sprawl

**Author's Note:**

> Alternatively: Pedro and Balthazar go stargazing. I don't know either. It seemed like fun.

  

 _Sometimes I wonder if the world's so small  
__Can we ever get away from the sprawl?_  

-

“I’m tired of studying for finals,” Balthazar says, slamming his book shut.

Pedro looks up from his notes and raises his eyebrows. “I bet you haven’t even started.”

“Such hurtful accusations,” Balthazar says.

“Such truthful accusations.”

Balthazar sighs. “But seriously. I don’t know how much longer I can reread the same paragraph about dominant chords before it either sinks in or I throw my book out the window.”

Well. Pedro can’t really say he disagrees. His eyes have been sliding aimlessly over this page for at least the past ten minutes.

“Okay, so study break,” he proposes. “Video games? Jam session? The weird conspiracy theory area of youtube?”

“Nah.” Balthazar grins. “Let’s get out of here.”

Pedro’s first instinct is to say no. It’s half past midnight, for one. Besides the fact that he has a final right at eight in the morning, there’s not going to be anything open, anywhere to go.

But he sees the look in Balthazar’s eyes, and he gets the feeling that maybe he doesn’t _want_ to go anywhere.

“Okay,” he says.

“Race you to the truck,” Balthazar says, and before Pedro has any time to process what he’s said, he’s already out the door. What a little shit. Out of spite, Pedro takes his sweet time, carefully packing everything up into his bag and stowing it under his table, slowly tucking his keys into his pocket.

When he finally gets to the truck, he almost feels bad. Balthazar’s already in the passenger seat, and though he's not visibly excited, the corner of his mouth is upturned. When he spots Pedro coming his way, he smiles fully, giving a dorky little wave. It’s so ridiculously adorable Pedro can’t resist kissing his cheek when he climbs in.

“Where do you want to go?”

“Anywhere,” Balthazar says, eyes bright. “Nowhere.”

“I can do that,” Pedro says.

“Let’s get out of the city.”

He means truly and properly out, Pedro knows. It’ll take time to get there, and it’ll take more time to get back. But at this point, he’s beyond caring. He wants what Balthazar wants. And so he gets on the road, and doesn’t look back.

-

They drive in silence, but it isn’t really silence. The windows are down, the rare car they encounter gently swishing by like ocean waves, and the wind swirls an intoxicating rhythm around their heads. The lights they leave behind stain the hills in yellow and white smears of brightness, too indistinct to figure out where they come from. Even in passing, the city drowns in anonymity.

A thrill of the unknown buzzes through his veins, quickly, deeply. They really could get lost, if they drove for long enough in the dark. He can’t even remember the last time he left Auckland on his own.

Though he’s not on his own, is he? Really, he can’t imagine that he’ll ever be on his own, not if Balthazar can help it.

Balthazar points out a dirt road that stretches into the distance. “There,” he says simply. Pedro complies.

Once they're sufficiently parked, he turns off the engine and they jump out the car, slamming the doors behind them. Pedro restrains himself from yelling out into the dark; he gets the feeling that what they’re sharing, the atmosphere, could be easily shattered. And so he finds Balthazar’s hand and holds on tight, and doesn’t say a word.

The skies stretch past the grassy hills, a wild sprawl of inky light. Out here, there are no streetlights to obscure the vast expanse of stars, and when Pedro tilts his head back he feels like an aimless satellite, spinning into space. 

He could get lost here, standing still among nameless galaxies. He could lose himself to the night.

“Fuck,” Balthazar breathes, a warm exhale against his neck.

“Let’s lay back here,” Pedro whispers back.

They jump into the bed of the truck. There’s just about enough room for them to lay there side by side. The metal digs uncomfortably into his back, but Pedro tucks his arm behind his skull and lets Balthazar rest his head in the crook of his neck. He pulls a blanket kept in the front over them, and Balthazar’s leg presses gently against his, and the whole time they never let go of each other’s hands.

“I’ll be honest,” Pedro says. “I never want to stop looking at this.”

Balthazar squeezes against him closer, ever closer. They could never get close enough.

“Though, you know, I don’t think I know shit about constellations,” Pedro says.

“Of course you don’t.” He can practically hear Balthazar rolling his eyes.

“What, like you’re some big expert?” Pedro says, mildly amused.

“I’ve done my fair share of reading,” Balthazar says. He lifts Pedro’s hand, still intertwined with his, into the air. Pedro can just make out the shadowy outline of a pointed finger. “You see those four stars, down there? Kind of in a kite-shaped thing? That’s the Southern Cross. And if you look in the direction that it’s pointing, you can kind of figure out where the South Pole is, and then you can figure out where all the other constellations are. Now, I definitely do _not_ know all those fancy names, but I think the one closest to the Cross is called Centaurus? Yeah, I think if we connect those stars right there…”

It’s amazing, honestly, that Balthazar is so into this. He’s not the kind of guy to make a statement, to just light up with enthusiasm like Beatrice or Ben might, but there’s still a certain kind of beauty that creeps onto Balthazar’s face when he talks about something he really cares about. Balthazar gets absorbed by what he loves, gets so caught up in what he’s doing that minutes and hours pass him by before he notices the time. It doesn’t matter if anyone else notices or not. But Pedro notices.

And it’s too dark to see Balthazar’s face, but that doesn’t stop Pedro from feeling the energy that courses through his body so strongly he can almost feel it in his own.

“It’s a lot harder than I thought it would be to make out these things,” Balthazar says. “But that’s okay. I think it’s enough, just to see it like this. I can’t believe we never thought of it.”

Pedro says nothing. It’s hard to know how to respond when he agrees so fully, in ways he can’t express. It’s not just the stars, though the sight of them is pretty awe-inspiring. It’s having Balthazar next to him, close and closer, with nothing but fields of grass and chilly night air to keep them company. It’s the mutual warmth they share beneath the blanket. It’s the feeling of melting into each other, the idea of letting their atoms spin around each other until it’s impossible to tell whose belongs to whose.

“What are you thinking about?” Balthazar says, squeezing his hand.

Pedro blinks. “What?”

“You look thoughtful.”

“You can’t even see my face.”

“Fine,” Balthazar says, laughing softly. “But still.”

He tightens his grip around Balthazar’s shoulders. “I’m thinking about how I never want to let you go.”

When Balthazar laughs this time, he can feel it against the skin of his collarbone.

“I can’t believe you’re such a sap.”

“It’s true, you know.” Pedro runs his hand through Balthazar’s hair fondly. “I can’t help it. I’m a fool for you.”

Balthazar snorts. “And don’t I know it.”

“I’m serious, though, you know that, right?” Pedro says quietly. “I love you.”

The tips of Balthazar’s hair brush his chin as he shakes his head. “You don’t have to tell me.”

But Pedro thinks about the years he spent taking and taking from his friend, his best friend, all the stupid shit he said and all the stupid shit he did. He thinks about the years Balthazar spent in silence, and he thinks about the years he spent denying the simplest truth of his life to himself. How can he ever forgive himself for that, for all that he fucked up? Hell, he hasn’t even started on the horrific mess that was senior year. There’s nothing he can do, except spend the rest of his life trying to make it up.

And how can he possibly make it up to Balthazar Jones? He can’t. But he can tell him that he loves him over and over and over again, and maybe one day the number of times he’ll have said “I love you” will equal all the times he should have said it, and didn’t.

“Yeah, I do,” he says.

Balthazar says nothing in response. But he pulls his hand away and wraps his arms around Pedro’s torso, resting his head on his chest, and Pedro doesn’t have to ask to know he’s listening for his heartbeat.

“Do you ever think…” Pedro hesitates. What he’s about to say is a sentiment he hasn’t expressed to anyone. But it’s late, and he’s tired enough to not need alcohol to admit these kinds of things out loud, and if there’s anyone he could admit anything to, it’s Balthazar.

“What?” Balthazar shifts, burying his face into his neck, murmuring the word against his pulse.

“Do you ever get scared about the future?”

Balthazar pauses, measured breaths fluttering across his skin.

“How so?”

“I mean…” Pedro closes his eyes, exhales. “You know what you’re going to do after we graduate. But we’ve been in university about a year, and I barely know – hell, I barely even know what I’m going to do in a week. They want you to go to school with your whole life planned out, but I just – what if where I end up isn’t good enough?”

Warm lips press against his jawline. He opens his eyes, and Balthazar looks up at him, gaze wide and sincere.

“I just…” Pedro runs a hand through his hair, sighing. “Sometimes, it all seems so pointless.”

“Yeah,” Balthazar says. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

Pedro raises his eyebrows, surprised. “You do?”

“Sometimes I try to think about all the lives everyone in the world lead.” Pedro doesn’t so much hear his words as he feels the vibrations of them, thrumming low in Balthazar’s chest. “Even just all the lives in Auckland. And I think about how we can’t possibly know all the shit people go through every day, all the good and the bad stuff, we just pass people by in the streets and we don’t know a thing about them. But it’s the same thing every day for us, isn’t it? Get up to go to class, study our asses off for numbers on a piece of paper, hope beyond hope we don’t fail out. And for what? So we can grow up to be faceless strangers in a city of faceless strangers? Life moves too fast in the city, sometimes, and sometimes I just feel so lost.”

Pedro can’t remember the last time he heard Balthazar say this many words at once this urgently. It makes him want to envelop him in his own body, shielding him from the world forever.

“But…” Balthazar laughs softly. “You know what? Maybe it doesn’t have to be like that. Maybe life can move just how fast we want it to. And I don’t need the whole world or the whole city to know who I am. It’s enough, I think, to remember who I care about and be remembered by them. Everything else is just background noise.”

Balthazar smiles, then, small and open. His eyes shine dimly with starlight. He shifts on top of him, lining up their racing hearts, and in the dark their mouths find each other. Pedro wishes, briefly, that he knew what to say in response. But he finds all the words he needs on Balthazar’s warm lips, an offering of absolution, and the stars dance behind his closed eyelids.

It’s a quiet world they’ve begun to build out here, outside the bounds of a cruel city. It’s theirs, nonetheless. And it’ll be gone in the morning, gone with the silenced light of the stars and the setting moon, but he’ll carry the memory of it in him for the rest of his life. And maybe, for now, that's enough.

These are the things that he thinks about, kissing a boy he loves under the sprawl of the universe.

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I, like Pedro, do not know shit about constellations.
> 
> Song title/lyrics borrowed from Arcade Fire's "[Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awHWColYQ90)".


End file.
